


Better the Devil I know

by TheCastleSpectre



Category: Baldur's Gate
Genre: Baldur's Gate 3 Spoilers, Ballroom Dancing, Demon Deals, Demons, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Sexual Tension, Temptation, Tieflings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28712112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCastleSpectre/pseuds/TheCastleSpectre
Summary: Astarion and the main character get trapped, entirely by their own fault, in the House of Hope. The House of Hope, a place set up to cause anyone who visits to fall to temptation and sell their soul to a devil. Except Astarion is interested in the wrong devil, and he’s a Tiefling who knows how to ballroom dance.
Relationships: Astarion (Baldur's Gate)/Original Character(s), Astarion (Baldur's Gate)/Original Male Character(s), Astarion/Charname (Baldur's Gate)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Better the Devil I know

“The House of Hope, where the tired come to rest and the famished come to feed - lavishly. Go on, partake. Enjoy your supper. After all… it may be your last.” Raphael bowed lowly, inviting all he had just whisked away from the camp to sit and feast. 

The creature didn’t have to speak twice. Danton immediately screeched back a chair and started piling up his plate with eggs and steak tartare. He’d smelled them the second they’d appeared in this tidy little dimension. They looked delightful! Far too much cooked meat, stew and tough bread recently. Granted, he was a touch disappointed the eggs weren’t raw, but not everyone cooks banquets tailored for a Mephistopheles Tiefling from the Eighth Plane of Hell. 

“Ah, excellent!” Raphael exclaimed and with a clap of his hands, even more egg dishes appeared. “I will ensure to have a dragon egg ready for you the next time you decide to visit my abode. Isn’t it wonderful we can sit down in such a civilized fashion together!”

Too busy grabbing a heaping pile of the newly-materialised scrambled eggs, Danton was unable to continue after more than a mouthful. “They taste a touch… aethereal. Come on, don’t tell me they’ve gone through a dimension door to get here? It always ruins the flavour.”

“But let us to business at hand!” Raphael coughed, trying to enable his grand scheme to be revealed. Well, revealed  _ just  _ enough. He’d been practicing his transformation-into-Cambion-form-for-dramatic-emphasis all evening in a bush off to the side of the camp, waiting to approach the party until he knew he’d gotten the wing unfurling just right. A hungry tiefling wasn’t going to get in his way. “Fear not, all of this is exceptionally straightforwa-”

Just at the moment he snapped his fingers and his skin began to deepen to crimson, Astarion interrupted his words with a cry of. “Mm, Danton, have you tried any produce from the Wizard of Wines Winery? I’m quite attracted to this bottle of  _ Red Dragon Crush  _ on the table- a favourite of Count Strahd Von Zarovich, its bloody past makes the taste oh so much more exquisite-”

“You aren’t here to eat!” Raphael stomped his foot as Astarion held out a second goblet after pouring himself a portion brimming to the rim of the priceless liquid. 

“Aha, you tell him we aren’t listening, friend,” Wyll started laughing at the spectacle in front of him.

“They will never make any more,” Astarion commented with a pout, “after Barovia experienced that unfortunate, ah, razing-to-the-ground.”

Meanwhile, Shadowheart grimaced on at the spectacle of Astarion and the Tiefling tucking into a nice dinner. “Urgh, clearly the greatest beast in the room isn’t even the one trying to eat our souls.”

“Does your soul taste of omelette?” Danton fired the comment her way, grinning a mouth full of one too many canines from that demonic bloodline.

“Please, I just have a few words to share-”

“My soul is rather more intact than your charred brain, hell-creature,” Shadowheart retorted. “Come on, we should be  _ out  _ of this place.”

“He really is no better than this fiend,” Lae’zel spat at Danton. “Control yourself! At once!”

Astarion and Danton were already on their second goblet of  _ Red Dragon Crush _ , after both downing the first like wolves. “So as I was saying,” Astarion continued, “The finest steak tartare in Baldur’s Gate is- well, after the satisfaction of biting off a few fingers of an officer of the Flaming Fist, certainly held within the walls of the Blade and Stars.”

Gale sighed. “I’m glad our field rations are so minimal. This is the  _ last time  _ I travel with a Tiefling nobleman from Kahnebor.”

“Can-bor?” Lae’zel repeated, bewildered.

Gale sighed a whirlwind of a sigh, as if having to explain a single fragment of common lore of Tiefling bloodlines was a much greater prison than being stuck in a mystery dimension with a cambion. “He’s descended from the House of Feasting, a demon house which existed on several of the planes of hell, mostly for the sake of Banquet preparation and coordination for the rest of the demonic world.”

Raphael took a move in the middle of this to bang his hand on the table to call for order, but it was just at the moment Danton was moving his head up from his food, causing the Cambion to get knocked and poked by some shank-sharp horns. 

“Oi,” Danton called out, but clearly at Gale for butchering his family lore, rather than Raphael for the accidental impaling, “we  _ started  _ as a feast arrangement house but soon moved onto much finer functions. Balls on the mouths of volcanoes, airborne weddings on sky rafts carried by imps, you name it. You’ll never know a sweeter group of pit-fiends.”

Raphael growled, sucking on the new wound on the side of his hand. “Silence! All of you! If you are so enamoured with this banquet-” 

Wyll raised one hand, trying to get the creature’s attention, other hand on his heart. “We definitely aren’t! Nope! Not us! One Blade ready to go back to camp, thanks.”

“ _ If you are so enamoured with this banquet _ , know I will return soon. I have nothing but time to-” Raphael’s eye twitched, his demonic game crumbling. “Nothing but time for my new partners and friends. I will return, bearing even more gifts, and I hope you are more than willing to listen to a reasonable proposal.” This was said very much through gritted teeth. “And, as you two are enjoying yourselves, you can stay for the rest of the evening.”

And so, after an attempt at demonic persuasion to go down in the annals of history as, well ‘let’s not write this one in the annals of history’, Raphael swirled his wings around his body, and was gone… along with everyone who hadn’t started eating, leaving only Danton and Astarion in the room together.

Astarion scooched back his chair from the banquet table and cracked back his head in a laugh. “Ah! Genius! You pull it off so well. Playing up to your more, ahem, bestial origins to convince him you are just a base, gluttonous creature. Now he thinks we’re harmless fools, we shall have more than enough time to snoop around this place and examine what he really might be up to. I am only honoured to have called you my partner in crime,” he shot the Tiefling a glimmering sharp smile.

“Wait,” Danton put down the clawful of steak he was devouring.  _ Oh. He thinks… Yes I’m definitely not going to tell him how my infernal family line actually compels me to devour food on sight. I am a strategic mastermind! I fire the finest Eldritch Blasts this plane has ever seen every six seconds.  _ “Of course!” He exclaimed. “And you didn’t even have to tadpole into my skull!”  _ Oh please, Lord Asmodeus, don’t let him tadpole into my skull _ .

“I find one might as well play into the world’s darkest expectations - leave them pleasantly surprised when you are capable of more,” Astarion started absentmindedly running a ring around the edge of his goblet with a finger. “But it is a grand find to be travelling with such a creature as yourself. Better the devil I know than anyone else.”

Fighting every urge to behave like a creature of the Hells, the Tiefling pushed back his chair and stood from the feast. “We should perhaps take a look around this place while we can. I imagine it’s all laden with sensory indulgence and temptation on the scale of this meal, rather than anything about what he might want to do with us.”

Astarion poured another goblet of wine for both of them for the road. “I do so hope he’s gotten my darkest desires right. It’s always such a shame when these creatures pop up and offer you nothing beyond straightforward carnal pleasure. Not even creative carnal pleasure, just-”

The elf darted down the hallway a few steps and opened the first door. Behind it was a plush room filled with cushions with a lot of naked collared male and female humans, all writhing lustrously on top of one another, all turning to the opened door in a synchronised pattern and beckoning the two of them to come in and join the fun. Astarion stepped back to the Tiefling’s side. “See! Not even a one of them was purple!” He leaned in a touch closer to the very intensely purple Tiefling, eyes narrowed knowingly. “Do they really think I’ll be aroused by such a lack of imagination?”

Trying to indeed push back thoughts of how easily it was to be aroused in this situation, completely unrelated to any of the visions of the illusory human concubines in the next room, and more related to the fact he was trapped in another dimension, alone, with the image of perfection of that elf next to him, Danton of course had to overcompensate to act completely unphased. “Of course!” he cried, batting a dismissive clawed hand in the direction of the sex room. “It certainly takes at least fifty lashes for me to even  _ consider  _ becoming aroused!”

Astarion spluttered into his goblet of wine as he stifled an immediate laugh, a few droplets of it missing the goblet and going running down his cheek. “Come on, let’s see what they have in store for us.”

What was originally meant to be a reconnaissance mission into the deep depths of a Cambion plot ended up being a mission to open every single room in the House of Hope and rate how good or bad of a temptation it actually was, all while learning a little too much about one another’s personal tastes, and while repeatedly trekking back to the banqueting table for more wine.

“Now, I personally think this is perhaps the best room so far-” Astarion rushed in and span around a few times as the two of them stumbled across a closet the size of a house, all filled with rails upon rails of hung up ornate clothes. He picked up a full-length robe with a very low V-neck, possibly intended for someone with cleavage. “Don’t you think this would fit Gale so well? His chest hair blazing, causing all enemies to cower in fear!”

“We should take it with us,” Danton agreed, folding the low-cut robe into his pack. “I’ll tell him it’s a special technique I can teach him from one of the hells. I think it could work.”

“Oh how I miss spending hours standing like a corpse being measured for new finery,” Astarion started ravishing his way through a wall of jackets, before adding an additional mostly black, but gold-hemmed one on top of his own. 

_ It isn’t even a Baatezu-weave, and look at that pattern getting cut off at the join!  _ Being as polite as a creature from the Infernal house of celebration about a garment made for humans could be, Danton still couldn’t possibly resist saying, “but it looks almost exactly like your own already!”

“Yes, I suppose it does,” Astarion let the jacket drop to the ground. “And worse, at that. Suppose I already have the best aesthetic sense in all of Baldur’s Gate.”

“Well, that wasn’t under a shred of doubt,” the Tiefling bent down and picked the jacket up. “But I’ve been stuck in rags since the Nautiloid crash, I could use it.” He put on the discarded jacket. It was not still warm from Astarion wearing it, but he could at least imagine it was! Well, not that someone from an ice plane cared all too much about the warmth.

They encountered a room that had nothing but cannon pointed at some distant dummy targets across a flagstoned hall. Another one was filled with nothing but rows and rows of sweets in long tubes which could be dispensed, which caused both of them to gag at the sugarey smell and immediately close the door. Another had nothing inside of it except a tortoise with a gold-plated shell encrusted with diamonds, wearing a cape.

“Now this one is inspired!” Astarion knelt down and stared at the tortoise, which kept slowly walking towards him, utterly unphased. “I usually feel nothing at disgust by those who are distracted by the charms of animal creatures, but think of this soul. Crawling around, burdened and tormented by luxury. It’s a beautiful act of cruelty to decorate a creature instead of eating it.”

“Oh come on, the owlbear was entertaining. Don’t insult the charms of animals, or I’ll set my chain beasties on you,” the Tiefling wanted to leave the tortoise alone, hoping Astarion wouldn’t bother it more than it already had been by whatever demons filled it with diamonds.

They opened a room filled with chains and other torture devices. Astarion hardly blinked noticing it, but had his eye drawn to the doorway. “And without any murder holes!”

“M-murder holes?” the Tiefling asked.

“A hole in the floor above a castle entrance or a grate above the seat in a torture room. You drop hot oil down on unsuspecting travellers. Imagine spending an evening torturing someone with devices right in front of them, just to send a bucket down on their head. Delightful!”

“Oh. Well, back in the hells we just have lava falling from the sky.”

Astarion chuckled a little. “Well, even better.”

After visiting a parfumerie room and blasting one another with projectile perfume spurts to the point where the air was particularly stagnant and vile, they came to the end of the long corridor of rooms to find a perfectly polished tiled black and white floor with a minstrel gallery at the far end. The paintings of the walls were mostly of imperious cambions and demons in finery, carrying sceptres or laden with jewelry. “Ah, a ballroom!” the Tiefling unintentionally started walking in an uneven left-right rhythm, going forward instead to the tune of a dance he could barely suppress. “It has been so long. I remember when we were still young and being trained to be good nobles of Kahnebor. Forced to dance until we collapsed. No one in Baldur’s Gate has ever had the stamina to match me.”

Astarion raised an eyebrow. “Well, well, I didn’t think we would actually find something that piqued your interest here. Whatever happened to that daring cynic who claimed I would  _ never dare  _ slit his throat on that beach?”

“You know full well my title is only ‘a daring talker-out-of-his-arse’.” The Tiefling sighed a little, imagining this place on fire as it should be, with creatures in couples darting dexterously between the flames on a floor of near-ice.

“Well, why not? I’m sure you can provide me with far better entertainment than anything in this vision, on just a slick floor. Just don’t blast me if I can’t keep up. One thing I never thought I’d see anyone tortured into was dancing,” The elf flourished with a hand and held it out to the Tiefling to take. It hung there in the air for a second as the other stood in disbelief.

_ Really? I didn’t think he liked me in this manner. Our relationship so far has been laughing at turning a squirrel into paste and making fun of Lae’zel while she was still stuck in the cage. Hardly what I’d consider dance partner material.  _ Despite that, there wasn’t ever a shred of doubt he was going to take the elf’s hand and start leading the way. He started up a simple Canian Eight Point turn. Eight steps in eight half-beats on the Eighth Plane of Hell. It was still at least double the speed of the usual fare nobles would totter around to in Baldur’s Gate, but he would be damned if he wasn’t going to take up this opportunity. What did set a fire in his heart was that after he set the beats by the sound of his feet, the minstrel gallery at the end of the hall started to summon ghostly instruments to play almost the exact classic song he’d had in mind, determined only from the frequency of his steps.  _ Ah well, there’s at least something to admire the cambions for. _

“Aha, brilliant!” Astarion cried, once the music started to fill the hall. Evidently, all that skill dashing around the battlefield meant Astarion didn’t feel a shred of challenge, and kept up marvellously. “You really are an expert. You’ve quite spoiled dancing with humans for me.” 

“It’s the tails, far better balance.”

“And such a shapely tail it is.” Not the worst tail compliment he’d received.

The two of them had their hands intertwined, but as some handfuls of bars went on, quite against Canian tradition, Astarion’s hand ended up migrating to Danton’s waist. _ Oh well, it isn’t as if he’s going to meet my parents _ . 

The elf leaned into his shoulder and started to talk lowly into his ear while they were dancing. “Of course, this whole time, we have been avoiding a simple question.  _ Whatever  _ would you have done if we had come across a room which actually showed what you most desired?”

The Tiefling forced his face into a smile for show, while a lot came crashing and cascading down in his brain. “Are you suggesting that might be something other than a tadpole carcass?”

“I’m suggesting that cambion might be cleverer than his little spurt of rage suggested.” Astarion raised his head to stare at the black-whites of the Tiefling’s eyes. “Perhaps he has done a fine job of bringing us a treasured illusion.” He reached up to place a cold hand on his neck, drawing his face closer, before the illusion shattered, the world was lit up in a flurry of golden light.

A blink, and they were both back at camp, grappled onto one another, in the middle of a fast step, Danton’s tail in the fire, Astarion treading all over a bedroll and making it filthy. They let go of one another the moment the world stopped spinning. The tail being on fire was a matter of storming over to the river and giving it a good dunk, but having to leave the elf behind. As Danton went running to the river, he started projecting in his most theatrical voice: “Combat most mortal! Good to make it out alive! We have fought Raphael’s foul ghosts!” The rest of those who had been asleep at the camp started to wake up and walk over to the shoreline, complaining and interrogating at the same time. Everything became a blur of chastisement and disapproval, which the Tiefling desperately fought off with of “Be not alarmed, this Cambion’s illusions were not as powerful as we thought, we remained sound of mind the entire time during our journey.”

But from the side of the river, Danton caught a glimpse of the elf rolling his eyes from near the fire and storming off to go to sleep.

_ Hells, I  _ would  _ sell my soul for one kiss with that man. _

\----

Note: set before CHARNAME, well, Danton, and Astarion have actually done anything physical, and before the vampire reveal dialogue, of course, because that happens well after the Raphael dialogue

Headcanon: those with from the ice planes have purple skin

Headcanon: I’ve always played/DMd Tieflings as a touch more monstrous than they appear in a lot of media. Teeth like needles, claws and tails like daggers, no pupils only hints of fire, and only interested in eating raw eggs. DM ruling here that’s what they like :P


End file.
